Sometimes IT HAPPENS that the life of a book resembles that of a child as it grows to adulthood. Born in relative obscurity, the book can take on its own life and speak for itself. Once that has occurred it is good that the author, like a wise parent, step backs and grants freedom to his creation. Over time there may be some unexpected characteristics that are revealed in the book with which the author is not fully at ease. The better thing is to let them be and, even when others criticize them, remain silent. The book has taken on its own identity. To add to or delete parts from it is to change its nature.
Eureka was written with deliberate purpose. No reader could escape the fact that, constantly throughout its pages, a case was pleaded. The reason for such directness stems from my schooldays in Ballarat. The things that happened on the Eureka goldfield in 1854 made me realize that the authority of the state had had its way, and that those who acted in its name had given their side of the story. They had told their tale in the blood of some of their servants and in that of many of the diggers. It was the turn of the diggers to have their say. Eureka with its Stockade was the place of the diggers, the place where they staked their claim to be themselves, with their own values and their own convictions. My Eureka had to explain why they went to their place, why they died there, and why their memory lived on.
When it came time to recount the arrival of the 12th Regiment at Ballarat on 28 November 1854, just five days before the destruction of the Stockade and the murder of many of its guardians, it seemed that here was a chance to redress the balance. During the preceding four years the diggers had suffered injustice, indignities, violence and intolerance that I had recounted in detail. At last, according to the record and the legend, they had paid back their tormentors and they had done so with the death of one whose very profession, and seeming youth, proclaimed his innocence. Repeatedly it had been said that, in the ensuing skirmish, the regiment’s drummer boy, John Egan, had been mortally wounded and died soon afterwards. Throughout the decades since 1854 those who judged Eureka as a sordid, inconsequential and best-forgotten episode in colonial history continued to recall the death of Egan. They eventually erected a monument in Ballarat to his memory. Despite my unease at the flimsy nature of the evidence, the lack of a death certificate or a grave, and the inability of the regimental archivist to furnish me with details on Egan, the widespread belief in his death had become so strong that it had to be part of my narrative. It seemed almost a relief to give an account of the death because in it, surely, lay some explanation for the infamous and barbarous conduct of the military and police a few days later.
In the ensuing seventeen years much evidence has come to light about Egan and his true fate. We can now be certain that, whatever the nature of his wound, he quickly recovered and was mentioned in an official promulgation in February 1855. In 1861 John Egan was still a member of his regiment. The monument to his memory as one who died at Eureka has recently been removed from the soldiers’ section of the Ballarat Old Cemetery. Thus, in my renewed version of Eureka, the word ‘mortally’ has been changed to ‘seriously’. There is good in this because it ill-behoved the diggers to bring death to a drummer boy. Granted that there was evil in his wounding, how much greater evil would there have been in his death? Moreover, his life removes a powerful weapon from the hands of those who were happy to use his alleged death as proof of the infamy and brutality of the diggers.
One of the constant refrains of those who continue to nurture the same concepts of authority enjoyed by the Queen’s representatives in 1854 is that, in telling the story of Eureka in word or symbol, it is necessary to be ‘fair to both sides’. They seem to regard the event as a kind of cricket game played under wholesome British rules in which one side won and demanded that the other gracefully bear defeat. In its stark reality Eureka was no game, but a bloodied drama of the human spirit played out on a battlefield where not even the rules of war were observed. Thankfully, relatively few men died on that battlefield in the line of duty. For each of that few, ten others died because they stood fast to the rights and dignity possessed by every human being. Their deaths and the symbol under which they died, the Southern Cross, now belong to the consciousness of the nation. They rest in the keeping of the Australian people whose democracy began on the field called Eureka.
Most authors would accept that, with the passing of the years and the development of mature reflection, some further things would have sat well in their story. Yet if the story itself has become part of history, as is the case with Eureka, it is best left to history to fill it out. The origins, purpose and importance of the Ballarat Reform League as seen in Eureka only touch faintly on the League as the first public step towards a republic. The events of the recent past have brought the republic to the fore and no history of its development can today ignore the contribution of Eureka to an eventual and decisive declaration of independence. The League did its part with the Charter of Bakery Hill, and to that Charter the diggers gave their assent as they stood on their ‘old spot’, Bakery Hill, on 11 November 1854. A few weeks later, in the Stockade at dawn on 3 December 1854, they baptized with their blood the principles of a republic of the free.
It is no idle dream or flight of fancy to believe that the day will yet come when an Australian republic will be proclaimed at the place where the diggers died for its ideals. Eureka will indeed be a fitting place for that act. The Southern Cross, the chaste and beautiful symbol of resistance to tyranny, will finally then unfurl over a united and upright nation.
JOHN MOLONY